This excellent exercise in atmosphere -- about a New England town ruled by a coven of witches -- falls just short of greatness thanks to an excessive reliance on horror movie clichés (e.g., sinister residents of said town staring ominously at the hapless protagonists). Yet while the lack of subtlety and refinement relegate the film to the ranks of entertaining spook shows (rather than genre classics), the four-star level of weirdness earns HORROR HOTEL a place alongside the most memorable cult movies ever made. On top of that, it sports what may be the best, most terrifying (happy) ending ever seen in a horror film -- a genuine tour-de-force that is so powerful in its imagery that it almost single-handedly erases any reservations one has about the rest of the movie.

Borrowing a page from Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY, the story of HORROR HOTEL (known as "City of the Dead" in its native England) begins with the execution of a witch, Elizabeth Selwyn (Patricia Jessel), around the time of the Salem Witch trials. Centuries later, Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson) is a college student taking a course in witchcraft by Professor Alan Driscoll (Christopher Lee). In order to some research for a term paper, she takes the professor's advice and visits a Whitewood, the town where Selwyn was executed, and checks into the Raven's Inn, which is operated by Mrs. Newless (also Jessel). Shortly thereafter, poor Nan finds herself abducted into the catacombs below the hotel, where she is the victim of a ritual sacrifice; among the hooded faces looming over her are Mrs. Newless and Professor Driscoll. Nan's brother Richard (Dennis Lotis) and her boyfriend Bill (Tom Naylor) grow worried when she fails to return from Whitewood, so they go to investigate; Bill gets in an auto accident on the way and remains mostly on the sidelines, while Richard talks with Patricia (Betta St. John), the daughter of the aging local Reverend (Norman Macowan), who claims that Whitewood is under a curse: the executed witch Elizabeth Selwyn now presides over a coven that maintains immortality by performing ritual sacrifices when the clock strikes thirteen. The only way to stop them is with the shadow of the cross. Richard is skeptical until Patricia is abducted to be the next sacrifice; he tries to save her, but the cult members restrain him. Bill revives from his stupor as the clock begins to strike midnight. The cult cannot flee without completing the ritual, and Mrs. Newless cannot strike the lethal blow (with a knife) until the thirteenth tolling of the clock. Following shouted orders from Richard, Bill uproots a cross from the graveyard and stumbles weakly toward the scene of the intended sacrifice; as the shadow of the cross falls upon the cult members, they burst into flames. Finally, Bill collapses, dead. Patricia and Richard go searching for Mrs. Newless, who got away. They find her in the hotel, her corpse withered and aged as if she had been dead hundreds of years.

As a piece of storytelling, HORROR HOTEL lifts several obvious motifs from Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO. Most notably, there is the hotel set in an isolated area that is now almost forgotten. The ostensible lead is a young blond woman who is murdered with a knife midway through. And the final revelation of Mrs. Newless in her decomposed state recalls the withered corpse of Norman's mother in the cellar of the Bates mansion.

Despite the obviously derivative elements, HORROR HOTEL works on its own terms as a sinister piece of supernatural horror. The New England setting, the witchcraft rituals, and the twist with Professor Driscoll being part of the coven -- all of these tie in nicely, creating a solid storyline the pulls the viewer along into the movie's strange world.

And it is strange. HORROR HOTEL is one of those lucky films whose missteps and limitations somehow magically fall into place, creating a weird alternative universe -- a sort of Twilight Zone in which the incredible seems completely natural. To begin with, there is not an actual exterior location shot anywhere in the movie, which was filmed entirely on studio sets, creating a claustrophobic sense of being cut off from the world at large. The "normal" world of college and homes is scene only in interiors, mostly brightly lit and cheerful. Whitewood, on the other hand, has numerous "exterior" scenes that were actually filmed inside a sound stage. Filled with fog, this obviously artificial town comes across like something out of a demented dream, the unreality adding to, rather than undermining, the unease in the audience.

The film's second major lucky break lies in the fact that it is an English production set in New England. The British cast strives with varying degrees of success (Lee best among them) to affect mid-Atlantic accents, and the result is a stilted artificiality that almost makes the film sound dubbed. However, as with the unreal (or surreal) exteriors, the strange vocal inflections only increase the off-balance sense of being set apart from the real world, adding another layer to the perception that we are trapped in a dreamy, imaginary landscape.

Where the film falls short is in knowing when to back off the spook show theatrics. The townsfolk of Whitewood are given to hushed whispers and threatening glances, underlined with lingering tight shots and music meant to instill fear. Not only is this effect so overdone that you are tempted to laugh, there is also a mysterious "Elder" (Fred Johnson), who shows up to hitch a ride with each intended sacrificial victim, and then inexplicably disappears from the car upon arriving in Whitewood -- a piece of hokum that is more amusing that frightening. It's not bad exactly, but it does seem to scream at the audience, "Ooo, scary!" in a way that recalls SCTV's Count Floyd.

Whatever the missteps, the film hits its stride during the climax, which is one of the greatest horror sequences ever filmed. The black-and-white photography lends the shadowy images an Expressionist power that goes far beyond anything conjured up by the narrative. Nan's dying boyfriend Bill, ostensibly the hero, resembles a shuffling zombie, seen only in silhouette as he wields the cross like a child using a magnifying lens to focus the rays of the sun to a flashpoint that ignites the target in a burst of flame. There is something uncanny in the character's movements, as if he were a puppet animated by an external supernatural force (rather like the revived sailors in Coleridge's "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner"), and cloaking his face adds to the perception that Bill may already be dead, his body nothing more than a vessel for some kind of divine retribution meted out against Elizabeth Selwyn's cult. Never has the power of a righteous God been portrayed with such unnerving force; even the plagues visited upon Egypt in THE TEN COMMANDEMENTS seem tame by comparison.

The entire film may not work at this exalted level, but it is more than suspenseful enough to hold your attention until the climax. Although his is truly a supporting role, horror star Lee turns in a solid performance, nicely bridging the gap between stern professor and demented cultist without undue histrionics. Despite the awkward accents, the rest of the cast mostly handle their roles well, even if the villains overdo their spooky routine a bit. The slightly hammy approach to horror during the early sequences guarantees that HORROR HOTEL will never achieve the same high critical reputation as, for example, DIABOLIQUES, but like that much-praised French thriller, HORROR HOTEL saves the best for last, serving up a devastating denouement that induces a level of fear few films ever achieve.

TRIVIA

Although the names "Selwyn" and "Newless" are not anagrams, they are the phonetic equivalent of palindromes (that is, "Selwyn" pronounced backwards sounds like "Newless"), indicating that that the Mrs. Newless who presides over the hotel is indeed the same person as the witch Elizabeth Selwyn, who was executed centuries ago.

This is the first horror film from the producer team of Milton Subotsky and Max J. Rosenberg (although the latter is uncredited). Later, the duo would form Amicus, a film company responsible for numerous horror titles in the 1960s and 1970s, including DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS, TORTURE GARDEN, and THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD.

Director John Llewellyn Moxey later directed 1973's THE NIGHT STALKER (about a vampire in Las Vegas), which became the most-watched made-for-television movie up to that time.